Top Ten Fatwas of the Leftist Jihad

Thomas Jefferson opined that “The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed form time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants, for this is its natural manure.”   In the Twentieth Century, we bore witness to such internecine fertilization in the forms of World Wars I and II, and the subsequent proxy wars against the Soviet Union and Communist China in Korea, Viet Nam and elsewhere.  As the Iron Curtain fell circa 1989, we had high hopes that our Tree of Liberty would be sated for a long time to come.  Who would have guessed that within just a score of the Cold War’s denouement, we would have to answer its desperate call for nourishment again? 

As we awaken from a relatively brief slumber of ignorance and complacency, it is becoming abundantly clear that we are confronted by a new enemy every bit as pernicious as the Third Reich.  One could argue that Islamofascists have always been a bloodthirsty and Draconian lot, but they have not been a worthy opponent of the United States since Thomas Jefferson himself dispatched our Marines to the shores of Tripoli in 1803.  Nevertheless, the Twenty-First Century has offered a great bounty to these kaffiya-clad trolls which all but levels the playing field, to wit, the nuclear genie has been released from the plutonium bottle. 

The prospect of an asymmetrical war against this fluid and shadowy enemy –lethal as it may be – is not overly disconcerting.  The United States should prevail in such a conflict faster than you can say The Manhattan Project.  There is just one problem: We are defending against a two-front Jihad.  On one front, we are engaged by furtive terrorists who seek to deploy weapons of mass destruction against our citizenry.  These are your Radical Muslim Jihadists.  On the other front, our hands are being cuffed behind our backs by old familiar acquaintances. These are your American Leftist Jihadists.  Both of these Jihadist factions undertake courses of conduct rather injurious to the United States.  The differences between the two movements merit exploration.

The Radical Muslim Jihadists are not shy about promulgating their fatwas, all of which are designed to achieve global domination.  We are all quite familiar with these fatwas by now – Destroy America, annihilate Israel, kill all the Jews, kill all the Christian Africans, forcibly convert everyone to Wahabist Islam, videotape the decapitation of infidels and broadcast the resulting horror, bomb European planes, trains and automobiles, turn Muslim children into walking explosives and have them kill other children – Praise be unto Allah -- yadda yadda yadda.  The Radical Muslim Jihadists make no bones about where they stand.  They openly and zealously oppose freedom of speech, freedom of religion, individual rights, self-determination, women’s rights, and representative government.

The American Leftist Jihadists are arguably more sinister because they actually claim to support the hallmarks of a free society.  And despite the fact that many of them genuinely believe they are acting in concert with such lofty principles, they are nonetheless committed to executing their own set of fatwas that literally poison our country from within.  As we prepare to engage our most formidable foe since the Red Menace, there are elements in our own society who do everything possible to sabotage our chances for victory.   It is as if our bodies are battling foreign bacteria while simultaneously suffering from a debilitating auto-immune disease.

Nevertheless, we can surely win the two-front Jihad, but only after we expose and counteract the American Leftist Jihad.  Towards this end, I will identify what I believe to be the top ten Leftist Fatwas threatening the United States.  They are, in no particular order, as follows:

1. ERODE THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

2. RENDER EVIL INDISCERNIBLE WITH A FAUX PHILOSOPHY OF MORAL RELATIVISM

3. MAINTAIN STALWART CONTROL OVER THE MEDIA AND INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING

 
4.  DENIGRATE AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM AND BLAME AMERICA FOR THE WORLD’S  PROBLEMS
 

5. PROMOTE SOCIALISM, COLLECTIVISM, ENTITLEMENTS AND A CULT OF VICTIMIZATION

6. REDISTRIBUTE THE WEALTH OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE REST OF THE WORLD

7. WEAKEN THE FAMILY UNIT IN FAVOR OF INCREASED GOVERNMENT CONTROL AND INFLUENCE

8. REVISE HISTORY AND OBFUSCATE THE TRUTH ABOUT THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC

9. PARALYZE IDEOLOGICAL OPPONENTS WITH POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND PERSONAL STIGMAS

10. MARGINALIZE THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION WITH THE ERRANT RULINGS OF ACTIVIST JUDGES

The witty Bill Maher recently appeared on an installment of Hannity & Colmes to discuss his criticisms of CBS programming decisions. Predictably, however, Mr. Maher soon changed directions and targeted the Bush administration’s efforts to defend our citizenry. Specifically, he claimed that the administration’s tacit approval of mildly torturing terrorists for the purpose of extracting life-saving information would cause the United States to lose our “moral high ground.”  While this position enjoys the pretense of saintliness (and probably curries favor among many decent-hearted Americans) it is itself based on tortured logic.  A cursory analysis of this untenable premise will show that anyone who insists on adhering to such cookie-cutter parameters should consider relocating to Paris and stockpiling white flags.

If torturing a known terrorist for the purpose of foiling a deadly plot to mass murder our fellow Americans is immoral, then surely anything the United States does which will knowingly result in the deaths of numerous innocent people is much more immoral.  Put even more simply, torturing one guilty person to save American lives cannot be considered nearly as immoral as killing many innocent people for the same purpose.  It is difficult to fathom Bill Maher and his myopic, self-righteous ilk arguing otherwise.  But if America had restricted herself to such foolhardy rules of engagement, we would all be speaking German today, and Bill Maher’s Jewish mother would most likely have perished in a Cyclone-B shower well before he was born. The United States emerged victorious from World War II because it used weapons of mass destruction against its enemies. The consequences of these decisive measures were the deaths and untold suffering of hundreds of thousands of people who were quite arguably “innocent.”  Did we lose our “moral high ground” because we won that war? 

Bill Maher’s attempt to identify the moral characteristics of our nation completely misses the mark.  A country’s moral high ground is not determined so much by how it decides to fight a war, but instead why it fights a war.  If we fight a war to protect liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and all the other pillars of our great American society, then we have retained our moral high ground.  Those who oppose these ideals and seek to wrest them from us have taken leave of their moral sensibilities (assuming they ever had them in the first place).  For what would be the more perverse result?  Killing and maiming a few hundred thousand “innocents” or sacrificing the last bastion of freedom on Earth because we are reluctant to do harm to others in defending ourselves? Would it be better for mankind if an Islamofascist regime prevailed in a conflict with the United States because we would not have harmed either the guilty or the innocent among them?  Is it preferable that the United States disappears while stubbornly clutching the so-called “high road” -- thereby giving carte blanche to a global Jihad which, by open and notorious admission, will oppress mankind with Islamofascism?  The answer lies in Senator Barry Goldwater’s famous assertion: “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.”

One of the problems with Bill Maher and other pragmatically-challenged liberals is that they simply cannot stomach the realities of war.  It is axiomatic that we cannot defend Western civilization by remaining civil.  World War III has begun.  Like it or not, we are now engaged in a war that threatens our very existence.  It is a war with new paradigms to which we must adjust.  It is a war wherein our enemies do not require a large standing army to defeat us.  It is a war wherein just a few assaults by our enemy will kill many of our people, ravage our economy, cripple us and cause us to implode.  It is a religious war that pits religious totalitarianism against religious freedom.  If Bill Maher values his freedom of religion, his freedom of speech and indeed his life and the lives of his compatriots, he should be willing to get his hands a little dirty.  Wars are not won by being nice.  They are won by using superior force.

If you want to eat steak, you have to kill a cow.  It is unappetizing and unfortunate, but that is a fact of life. Similarly, if you value freedom, you have to be prepared to fight for it and you have to be committed to winning.  Otherwise, there is no point in fighting.

The first question in this moral inquiry is not whether we should employ torture.  It is whether we should win this war.  Do we have the moral justification to win a war against Islamofascist terrorists?  Who fights for good and who fights for evil in this conflict?  It is astonishing that liberals raised in the United States do their best to resist acknowledging this painfully obvious dichotomy. The party who fights to preserve individual rights, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, private property and equal justice under the law is the party who fights for good.  The party who forces its religion on others with violence, who prosecutes genocide, who butchers homosexuals because of their sexual orientation, who brutally oppresses women, and who sends its own children to their explosive deaths as they murder other innocent children – is the party who fights for evil.  It is this simple.  It is this clear.  The United States has the unquestionable moral authority to win this war.  Therefore, the use of any force for the sole purpose of furthering this well-defined objective is morally justified.  And while indiscriminate torture for the sake of sadistic pleasure or even revenge is an abomination by any reasonable standard, we should not shed any tears in response to the use of force on guilty terrorists for the narrow purpose of saving the lives of our fellow citizens.  This helps us to win the war against an enemy that unambiguously intends to destroy us and that seeks to erase the hallmarks of freedom from the annals of recorded history.

Unfortunately, I find that the majority of the legal profession slants notoriously to the Left.  Attorney organizations are usually up to no good.  Sometimes they attempt to redistribute wealth with misguided litigation, and other times they try to raise the bar of entitlements by advocating for irresponsible legislation.   But perhaps the most subtle social corrosion they are inflicting upon America is accomplished with their chorus of demands for the sacred cow of "diversity."

Presently, there is an unchecked movement metasticizing across all the legal departments of corporations in America.  It is designed to punish law firms that do not maintain diversity statistics otherwise palatable to the radical left wing. 

I maintained my own law practice for 12 years before going "in-house" to a rapidly expanding retail concern headquartered in Los Angeles.  Upon landing this terrific position, I sought to prepare myself for the complex metamorphosis from outside litigator to in-house counsel.  Towards this end, I subscribed to an interesting magazine named Corporate Counsel that markets exclusively to corporate attorneys figuring that it would bring me up to speed on issues affecting this niche profession.  Although I found the magazine to be somewhat liberal, I did appreciate much of what it had to offer.  However, I was also shocked to find that a subscription to Corporate Counsel automatically comes with a subscription to Diversity -- a periodical published by MCCA (Minority Corporate Counsel Association) that preaches forced diversity with the impenetrable presumptuous righteousness of an Islamic Fascist Imam. 

A couple of years ago, I sent a letter to the editor of Corporate Counsel magazine to voice an opinion that apparently hails from the road less traveled by attorneys.  Although the editorial staff disagreed with my position, they appreciated the expression of my opinion, and to their great credit, they published an abridged version of my contrarian missive.  Following is the full text of my original letter:

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Dear [Editor]:

 
          After 12 years of practice in my own law firm, I recently accepted a position as the chief legal officer to a growing company in Los Angeles.  As part of my preparation for this challenging transition, I requested a subscription to your fine magazine.  The first issue I received was the August 2004 issue.  I found many of the articles to be interesting and informative.  However, I quickly discovered that this periodical is peppered with a social agenda that I find misguided and troubling.   Inasmuch as you have a separate periodical exclusively dedicated to it, I would not be surprised if you and your colleagues bristle at my iconoclastic concerns -- but I ask that you please give them due consideration and share them with your subscribers.  A different point of view amidst a sea of acquiescence and unconditional support may prove refreshing.

            Your “In The News” piece on page 40 laments that diversity still ranks low on the list of reasons to hire a law firm, suggesting, of course, that it should be a much higher concern.  If I may be so bold… The reason why diversity still ranks low on this list is simple common sense.  Diversity is, and should remain, an irrelevant factor in this equation.  A person’s race, ethnicity, gender, etc. does not bear on their talent in any regard.  To aver otherwise is fundamentally racist, sexist, ethnocentric, et al.  Generally speaking, diversity should neither be a positive nor a negative consideration in a hiring decision.  It serves both business interests and social justice to remain colorblind in the pursuit of talent as opposed to being talent-blind in the pursuit of color.

This is especially true when one is hiring to protect the legal and financial interests of other people.  Corporate counsel are charged with this exact responsibility.  When a company must hire outside counsel, there can be no question that their corporate counsel have a fiduciary duty to hire the best lawyers available upon the most favorable terms.  If a general counsel gives more consideration to outside firms’ diversity statistics than to factors that objectively prove their talent, then that general counsel will arguably be breaching his/her fiduciary duty in favor of serving a dubious social agenda.  For profit corporations do not exist to advance social agendas.  They exist to engage in business and compete for profits.

On page 54 of your magazine, there is an advertisement from Miller & Martin, PLLC which ostensibly panders to those who are wistfully enveloped by such unbridled political correctness.  The firm proudly announces to your readership that its “diversity is one of [their] greatest strengths.”  While I may offer kudos to its marketing department, I can hardly agree with the firm’s underlying proclamation.  Pardon me for asking, but how exactly is ethnic diversity a strength in the practice of business law?

 A fragile response to this question can be found in your article entitled “Courting Shell” on page 106.  Nathan Koppel reports that companies want to have “lawyers who think and look like jurors”.  But let’s break that down.  If we want to have lawyers that look like jurors, then shouldn’t most of our lawyers be white since white people presently constitute the majority in the United States?  Or perhaps we should have only minority representation in inner cities and white lawyers everywhere else.  Doesn’t such thinking promote racism as opposed to counteracting it?  The second part of Mr. Koppel’s commentary also runs afoul of logic.  Do we really want lawyers who “think” like jurors?  Most jurors do not have the level of sophisticated intellect that successful lawyers enjoy.  In litigation, cases are more often won or lost in the pre-trial campaign rather than during trial.  I would much rather hire a lawyer who thinks like a great lawyer and has the ability to anticipate how any given jury pool will process information.  This is the mark of pure excellence in trial advocacy.  A lawyer who merely thinks like a juror cannot do most of what is required to steward a litigation engagement through to victory.  It is also unfairly demeaning to minority lawyers to imply that they think more like jurors than they do accomplished attorneys.

Mr. Koppel also quotes Shell Oil’s general counsel, Catherine Lamboley, to support the apocryphal presumption with which I take exception.  Ms. Lamboley reports that “When you use people with diverse backgrounds and different ways of looking at things, you get to a better solution.”   Absent any hard examples, I am left with the impression that this is empty rhetoric (although, in fairness, Ms. Lamboley was obviously not contemplating a plucky challenge to her premise).  But, clearly, people come from different backgrounds for thousands of reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the traditional sacred cow benchmarks of diversity (eg., race, creed, sexual orientation, etc.).  For example, a person raised by a single parent has a different background than one who was raised by two parents.  A poor person is different from a wealthy person.  Someone who studied biology in Brandeis University is different than someone who studied art in San Diego State.  Let’s face it -- The countless life experiences of everyone are unique in and of themselves, and they contribute equally to the way we each think.  It would be myopic error to elevate the importance of one’s race, ethnicity and/or sexual orientation in the context of the way a particular person thinks beyond that of any other of the thousands of differences among people.  And to suggest that these sacred cow rubrics of diversity are what actually help companies reach better legal solutions is a preposterous endorsement of political correctness gone awry.

Consider, if you will, in the most pragmatic sense, why this is so.  Quotidian legal issues encountered by corporate counsel in modern active businesses include such complex subjects as 1) protecting secured interests threatened by a bankruptcy filing; 2) determining whether a particular shifting of risk would be subject to insurance regulation; 3) crafting a non-disturbance clause for a commercial lease agreement; 4) developing a strategy to protect an intellectual property portfolio; and 5) litigating the enforceability of a non-competition clause.  The reality is that there is a finite set of solutions available in each of these situations, and none of them would be impacted in any measure by the “diverse” nature of the attorneys contemplating them.  Can anyone reasonably argue that by having a Cherokee Indian attorney in a meeting that addresses any one of these issues (or any similar business issue for that matter) would be more beneficial than not having such an attorney in that meeting?  Precisely what aspects of the unique Cherokee mentality would help corporate counsel arrive at a “better solution” to any of these legal quagmires?   While we’re on the subject, would the diversity of a Cherokee attorney be more beneficial to his corporate client than the diversity of an African American attorney? Or vice versa?  Recognizing value in one’s diversity begs such an absurd inquiry.

It should certainly go without saying that a Cherokee attorney should not be excluded from a legal strategy meeting because of his ethnicity.  His ethnicity is a neutral factor, and it is therefore as irrelevant as his penchant or abhorrence for pistachio ice cream.  The only relevant issues should be whether that attorney has the level of expertise required to address the legal issues at hand, and whether his services can be obtained on reasonable or favorable terms.

Forced diversity is a prescription for underperformance.  It is also a backdoor mechanism for proliferating racist thought and breeding resentment -- Just ask any Caucasian who lost out on a job opportunity because she is white.  Is not forced diversity an arbitrary commitment to helping certain classes of people at the expense of others – and at the expense of reason itself when superior talent is consequently overlooked?  Would proponents of forced diversity exhort the hiring of “audibly challenged” people in our local fire departments even though they cannot hear the choking screams of people trapped in a burning room?  Granted, this is an extreme hypothetical, but it makes a clear case for a flawed line of thought.  Imagine the justifiable ire of a Fortune 500 CEO receiving the following post mortem report from his general counsel after losing a multi-million dollar antitrust suit: “Well, our lawyers may not have been the best oral advocates, and other firms probably have better win/loss records, but the senior partner who argued our case is a lesbian, and her second chair is a Peruvian national.  And, you’ll be happy to note that between the two of them, they logged over 100 hours of pro bono work last year.  So, we had all of that going for us… which is nice.” 

The bottom line is, after all, the bottom line.  Results matter most.  It is disingenuous and counterproductive to proselytize differently.  This is why diversity rightfully remains a low priority (if any at all) when in-house counsel decide upon whom to hire to safeguard the legal interests of their employers.  Despite corporate America’s continued adherence to such conventional wisdom, there appears to be a prevailing movement to raise the importance of diversity in this context upon a false premise.  Nevertheless, many prominent people and organizations pay great heed to this unwavering idealism.  In fact, the growing numbers of those who promulgate this agenda have become a collective emperor in our society, ostensibly attempting to numb our ability to reason on this issue. But in my heretical opinion, the emperor is not wearing any clothes.

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The month after my letter was published, the president of MCCA, Veta T. Richardson, submitted a letter to Corporate Counsel in response to mine in which she called me a "racist" (without explaining why) and lambasted Corporate Counsel for having the temerity to publish my letter.   I suppose I should not have expected anything less from someone like Richardson.  This is the typical Left Wing reaction to a well-reasoned broadside on their ideology -- Castigate your opponent personally and disregard the underlying argument.  She demonstrated embarrassing cowardice by avoiding a colloquy on the merits.  Albeit, in reality, what else could Richardson say in response to my divergent revelations?  I completely eviscerated the raison d'etre of her entire organization, and it is difficult to discern any reasonable defense of a policy that, ironically, is itself inherently racist.  Despite her apparent intellectual shortcomings, Richardson has renowned attorneys from blue chip law firms falling to their knees begging for recognition as "Diversity Partners".  (For those of you not "in the know", the term "Diversity Partners" is double speak for institutions that regularly practice reverse discrimination.)  There is probably much in common between the MCCA and the Jesse Jackson School of Shakedown Tactics.

The post-script is that Corporate Counsel weakly responded to Ms. Richardson (underneath her letter) by saying that my views did not reflect theirs and that everyone is entitled to their opinion.  Corporate Counsel also declined to publish my sur-reply , but I understand why.  They probably thought that their magazine was not an appropriate forum for such back-and-forth correspondence.  However, I think it is an important debate.